I would like to have the OS on one partition and Users and other data on the other. Any guides to partitioning out there?

I recently did a clean install on my new laptop and I have partitioned my hdd into a C drive (44.0 GB) and a D drive (253 GB). I want to have only the OS on the C drive and all of my data on the D drive. This data would include the Users folder as it has all of the documents and other stuff in it. Is there a safe way to move the Users folder to the D drive? I've searched around and answers seem to say that it can be done but with many problems and the process is somewhat tedious. I don't want to waste my time doing it and have problems. Is partitioning the drive even worth the effort? I do realize that it would allow me to reinstall the OS without moving anything, but I want to keep the hierarchy of the Users folder. Should I just extend my C drive throughout the entire hdd and not worry about it?

 

While it is not advisable to try to move the USERS folder itself, it is possible to move the various folders that typically reside under it. The ones most folks worry about are the Documents, Pictures, Music, Favorites folders etc..

In Win7 there are several user folders you can easily relocate. (See the attachment.)

For any of these just right click the folder, select properties and go to the location tab. From there you will find a MOVE button that does the heavy lifting.

The rest of the stuff stored under USERS, while important, can be considered transient enough that if you do restore back to an old instance of your C: partition (and thereby an older version of the USERS folder) you won't have any real issues. Some settings for various apps might get lost but no real data will be gone.

One last note, if you use Outlook, you might want to move the PST file from the users folder to your Documents folder. After that open Outlook and it will complain that it can't find the PST file and allow you to point it to it's new spot. Close and reopen Outlook and it will be fine. Why Microsoft chose to bury the PST file in the USERS folder structure and not the Documents folder is beyond me. That file IS a user document. It has all your contacts, emails, calendar etc. If you use some other email app with a local datastore, make sure you point it to the Documents folder.

Gary

 

Gary's advice is good, and worth following in all points. I have just one comment on the partition sizes you have chosen: 44GB for the OS and all programs and settings is very tight, in particular considering that you will typically also have to accommodate a paging and a hibernation file, nowadays typically worth about 10gigs all by themselves. How much you really need depends on how many, and what programs you plan on installing, but you may want to re-think the size of your C partition. There is software available that allows you to resize partitions, but it's better not to rely on that.

 

I actually move my pagefile to the D: partition, just so my image file of the C: partition is 3gb smaller. (You can't move the hibernation file though. I just disable hibernation before I image the partition and re-enable it after. Saving a total of 6 gb on the image size.) But your advice is good, I too would allow a bit more space for C and now is the time to do that.

Gary

P.S. moving the pagefile will cause the OS to admonish you that it will no longer be able to write a dumpfile if an error occurs. If I ever need a dump file it is because of a repeatable error, in which case I move the pagefile back to C temporarily. I have done that a grand total of zero times in ten years.

 

How large should my partition for the OS be? I can extend the size of it with the disk manager utility but after reading a bit, I assumed that 45GB would be enough. I'm guessing I'm wrong, as I can definitely see myself installing a large amount of software

EDIT: I just extended my System partition to a little over 95GBs. left the remaining 200 for data
EDIT2: so i accendentally moved my contacts folder and apparently my hdd is now my contacts folder. does anyone know how to undo this because I'm having difficulty getting it fixed

 

You can simply click on "Restore Default", but be careful to not let the utility move the current folder contents, otherwise it will attempt to move all of the contents of your hard drive there. Simply copy the contacts (if any) you had (which are now on your D: partition, I assume) back to the Contacts folder manually.

 

I'd also add, if this is under Win7, add D drive folders for Pics/Movies/Docs to your libraries for easy access.

 

Don't go too far with the partition. The problem lies in that with HDD's the larger the primary partion the more you force the data away from the outer tracks where the OS and programs reside.

You the do two primary things. You force longer seeks to get to the data from the OS and program files along with you then slow the data stream by placing the data files in the slower area of the drive. of course both are bad for performance and possibly work flow.

I have found unless there is a specialized need the single partition works best. Of course other opinions will differ and as always YMMV but as they say, "If it aint broke, don't fix it".

If you are worrying about an OS reinstall just regularly use the backup imaging capability built into Windows 7, it works great for me so far..........

 

I think if you move the existing folders using the method suggested earlier, that they will still be in the libraries. I don't think you have to do anything to add them. But I could be wrong, as I moved them a long time ago and don't remember if I manually added them or not. But I don't think I did.

Gary

 

I am curious if you have any metrics regarding that added seek time? There is no doubt that it does increase the seek time, but to what degree? I have no numbers either, but my gut feel is it is not going to be noticeable at all.

Re: the built in imaging, again I have a question. If I have a single partition, does that image everything or only the programs and OS?

Gary

 

Metrics, no I have none either. I can tell you is in usage I had noticed a slight difference when I had tried it with my 7K500 and U81a. I went back to single partiton. I definately noticed the data stream slowdown effect.

Now not all HDD's are equal. With the Momentus XT I would imagine the effects could be minimalized by the drive caching data to the SSD section. So with that drive there may actually be benefits to keeping the OS and programs in the outer tracks with a partition for data. Again I'm am speculating here.

The seeks are the huge slowdown of the HDD. seeking on the first 100 GB of the drive is relatively fast but gains as you go out further. If your primary is kept to a minimum of free space you most likely are also minimizing both the extra seek and data flow slowdown. so again YMMV.

Personally I don't like to play games and want to be minimalist on maintenance. trying to keep the size just right to keep primary partion free space at a minimum does not apeal to me.

Also if you use system restore it already places its files in the middle of the drive. meaning it isn't exrta space between the os and data. Another reason for a single partition.

Again there are specialized applications like scratch space etc that multi partions pay. To me too much hastle for too little return, I'd spend more time setting up and tweaking it then I'd loose just leaving it alone................

 

Do it and not worry about partitioning, mapping user data to another partition.